Conclusions of Variety A Personal Blog on my happenings and thoughts

More on the New Job and Gateway 08Posted by cczernia on September 26th, 2008

My new job has been going well. I started on Sept 2 and have almost finished a month. A lot of it has been getting use to corporate work style. I’m use to working in companies that have 5-20 employees. I’m now working in a company that has 500 employees at their main office and over 1200 employees world wide.

I now have a cube and don’t see many people throughout the day. Most of communication takes place through IMs, emails, or meetings. Everyone has been extremely friendly but it is still difficult to get into the corporate groove. I don’t think I have discussed anything outside of work since I have been here and have been afraid to go to any events such as an ice cream social that was held a few days ago and the coffee cup logo recycling party we had two weeks ago. Next week we are having a party to celebrate the release of the latest version of our product.

The work itself has been interesting. I helped put together a Knowledge Base for our tech alerts and have been updating the site for version 7 or our product. I’m use to having 100% control of the source files and development. Here I have minimal control. I can’t access any files to our Knowledge Base software and we use a Content Management System (CMS) called Reddot that is extremely limiting in what I can do. One nice feature of Reddot (when it works) is that I can edit a page and then submit it to a reviewer who then makes the page live.

I think it will take me another month or two to get comfortable working in this atmosphere. It seems to get better each day as I learn who people are (and am able to place faces to the name of the IMs and emails). I even scheduled and ran my first meeting today.

In other news I went to Gateway RPG con the weekend before I started working at Websense. It was a lot of fun and both games I ran (WoD Innocents, and Shadowrun) filled. Shadowrun even had an extra player. I got to play in “Gray Ranks” a game about teenage rebels in Poland during the Nazi occupation.

D&D at the library has slowed down a little. I have had to cancel three sessions due to my new job. I decided to cancel two just to get use to things and then had to stay late for v7. It has also gone down to 6 kids (down from 12 since the end of spring semester) which has been nice.

New JobPosted by cczernia on August 15th, 2008

I got a new job. Starting August 2nd I’ll be working for a company called Websense which does web filtering and security. I am excited as this is my first big corporate position. I have always worked for small businesses and wondered what it was like to work for someone big. Well, I’ll be finding out in two weeks.

I’ll be in charge of the user interface for tech support. Right now most tech support is done through phones and they want to boost the usability of their esupport including a searchable knowledge base and a chat program. I’ll be in charge of these applications from maintenance to improving the look and usability to them to coming up with whole new systems. I am excited about the work but also excited about the benefits which are a huge improvement over what I’m currently getting.

I’m excited to start but still have a lot of stuff to wrap up at my old job which had its own weirdness. I am still attached to Trio because I helped make grow and feel that I have left a part of myself in the company.

Jury Duty and FencesPosted by cczernia on February 5th, 2008

Last week I got selected to do jury duty. It was a criminal trial where the defendant tried to smuggle meth across the border in Tecate. When the customs agents where examining his vehicle he ran back into Mexico but left his Alien ID card, drivers license, and truck in the agents.

A few years later he jumped the border and a border patrol officer caught him. They figured out he was the same man who tried to smuggle the drugs and arrested him. The jury ended up convicting him.

It was an interesting experience if a bit boring at times. I liked seeing how our justice system really worked. It was also nice not having to be there until 9am and I got a lot of reading done.

Stephanie and I also saw the premier of “Fences” by August Wilson at the Cygnet Theater. It was amazing and Stephanie said it was the best production they had done. We normally don’t go to premiers so it was funny seeing more people dressed up along with a buffet after the production that we didn’t stay for.

Minneapolis and the FiresPosted by cczernia on October 29th, 2007

A week ago I flew up on Thursday to Minneapolis to visit my friends Joe and Lisa. We hadn’t seen each other for over a year and that was just visit to Madison WI. It was good catching up with him and of course the first day was all about old times and catching up including playing an old video game called “Rpg-Maker” where you create a rpg in the style of Final Fantasy II and III. We called our “The Adventures of Hot P” and it was about a blog that wanted to became human so he could have sex. It was silly but brought back a lot of memories.

We also visited Dinky Town, played and beat Halo 3, and played a lot of other games. We also went to the Walker (modern art museum).

I returned on Sunday and as I was flying over San Diego I noticed a number of forest fires. So, I land in San Diego to have it burning down around me… again. Four years at almost the exact same time of year and exact conditions we had a huge forest fire. Now I got to experience it all again. It wasn’t as bad this time because I was 8 miles from the two forest fires. Monday and Tuesday were extremely intense as people were evacuated and we couldn’t control the fires. Even though I wasn’t in danger I had a lot of friends that were in danger of the fire. While I was at work everyone was glued to the internet or radio and constantly updating the google map of the fires.

Everything is fine now but it was a crazy experience. No one got much done at work and everyone is looking forward to normality.

Make Your Store More Portable.Posted by cczernia on May 23rd, 2007

Every week my company sends out an email ad to our customers. This is stuff for a retail store and usually is our latest items in our catalog.

We recently decided to create a new category where we put items by a store type such as clothing store, sports store, jewelry store etc. Our first one was a portable store which was also a way to push one of our newest products, portable display cases.

When creating these ads we usually just have a picture of the product but in this case we are pushing a store type so having pictures of a bunch of fixtures doesn’t help much. We needed a picture a swapmeet/flee market or convention booth. We couldn’t find any decent pictures on shutterstock or google. So, we ended up using this one.

What about the New PostPosted by cczernia on March 16th, 2007

It has been over a month since I posted anything so I thought I would today. Not a lot has been going on. I’m still dealing with server/hosting problems at work but at least I can see a light at the end of the tunnel.

I recently went into the dentist. I’ve determined that I have bad teeth because I brush twice a day and floss but still have problems. I have four new cavities and it has been 2 years since I got my last ones filled.

Gaming has been a lot of fun. I recently finished up part 1 of my Mage game which is a school for Mages. I have run a similar Mage game and thought it would work perfect for my current group. I got to do some experimental roleplaying in which we had a time loop adventure (like the movie “Groundhog Day”) and an adventure where one PC died and didn’t know it (like the movie “The Sixth Sense”). Both adventures were a big success.

I happy about the daylight saving time because now I get to play tennis on Wednesday afternoon. Well, I will. I had to work late last Wednesday.

That sums up March. I have a lot of things coming down the line including “Tool” concert, two weddings, and my trip to England/France.

Birthday 31 and hosting woesPosted by cczernia on February 15th, 2007

Hurray for birthday. I have survived 31 years. I don’t have too much planned. Maybe dinner and dancing Saturday night and Stephanie is making German Chocolate Cupcakes.

Things have been crazy at work. For the past few years we have worked with a hosting company that consisted of one guy. He had been a great help until recently when he all of sudden dissapeared and wouldn’t return emails, calls, or pms.

I am now in a rush to try and switching hosts but the big problem is I had our old hosting company set up our domains which means I don’t have the passwords to switch our new site, waveridersgallery.com. The switch has been difficult and tedious with my software packages being stubborn during install. Hopefully I’ll have it all figured out by the time I’m 32.

Quartet, The New OfficePosted by cczernia on January 8th, 2007

This post has been a long time coming and I’ve just been lazy about putting it up. For 2006 the company I worked for kept growing until we got too big (again) for the building. This time we couldn’t add on to the back so for a few months we looked for a second building and found one about two blocks down from the road.

At the beginning of November we moved into the new building which houses the design department including web guy (myself), graphic designer (Steve), marketing guy (Adam), copy editor (Eric), Waveridersgallery.com guy (Tim), and the Albert (Albert) who does a little of everything.

Part of this move was for a new company called waveridersgallery.com in which Tim was hired. Waveridersgallery.com is a new website which will sell surf art. There is currently a blog up and it should go live at the end of January and we are all excited about it.

The new office is great as it isn’t just a new office but a new direction for the company. We are no longer just a retail design and fixture company but a full web marketing company. We now have meeting where we talk about what cool stuff we could sell on the web, gather those ideas and try them out. We call ourselves Quartet and the only other live site we have is retailmob which is a user content driven site for retailers. We also redesigned “Crowd in a Box” which is a site that sells inflatable extras for movies and advertisements. If you are super bored and want to check out the sites here they are.

waveridersgallery.com
retailmob.com
crowdinabox.com

Class FinishedPosted by cczernia on May 19th, 2006

Back in January I started an online PHP/SQL class. For those who don’t know, PHP is a popular web based programming language and SQL is a database. The two work together to create such applications as blogging software, online forums, e-commerce shopping carts, and CMS (Content Management Systems) that are becoming more popular.

So, I just finished up the class and got a 100%. I don’t want to brag, but really, I got a ONE HUNDRED PERCENT! Anyway, I really enjoyed the class and learned a lot though not as much as I would in a normal class. I have had a love/hate relationship with programming since high school. The class was easy and we had plenty of time to complete the assignments.

What I noticed about the online class is that you basically teach yourself. You read the book, read the instructors notes, and then complete the assignment. If you get stuck you can email the professor. I find that without the assignment or the little help from the instructor I can’t teach myself. I might try and read a programming book but won’t get past the second chapter, won’t do any practice programs and basically don’t learn anything.

So, this summer I signed up a javascript class. Javascript has been a thorn in my side forever. For some reason it seems twice as complicated as PHP and I don’t know why. It should be interesting.